


Once Upon a December

by M_Leigh



Category: Anastasia (1997), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe, Amnesia, Homelessness, M/M, MAJOR KATE ARGENT WARNING, Trauma, profound historical inaccuracies, stiles stilinksi: nightmare human being
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-01
Updated: 2013-10-01
Packaged: 2017-12-28 03:55:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/987369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_Leigh/pseuds/M_Leigh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Scott would not have thought, years ago in the orphanage, that being befriended by Stiles would ultimately mean sneaking into the Archduke of Russia’s residence in Paris in order for Stiles to chase after the homeless man of his dreams, but he’s gotten very good, over the years, at rolling with the punches."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Upon a December

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gyzym](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gyzym/gifts), [Febricant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Febricant/gifts).



> I am choosing to blame gyzym for this story. Also, Nat, who is a horrible enabler.
> 
> In the spirit of the original, this a) does not actually make sense in a real-world way, and b) bears no real resemblance to any period of history, although it nominally takes place in the 1920s. WHATEVER. DO YOU CARE? I'M PRETTY SURE I DON'T CARE.
> 
> Warnings: this story features a Derek whose past with Kate Argent is, um, as nightmarish and abusive as you would expect, but who is suffering from amnesia. Seemingly inexplicable triggers and some weird dream sequences result.
> 
> Also, everything is terrible, Stiles especially.
> 
> ENJOY.

**_PART THE FIRST: IN WHICH OUR HERO MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF YOUNG MEN OF CONSEQUENCE, AND AGREES TO PARTICIPATE IN A SCHEME._ **

“I mean, I don’t know,” Scott says dubiously, looking down at the faded, battered painting on the table. One side of the frame is missing. “It just, um. I mean, he’s pretty distinctive looking? Also, I’m not sure I’m a good enough liar to con the fucking _Archduke of Russia_.”

“Psh,” Stiles says, waving his hand dismissively. “As though we couldn’t find ten close approximations of this dude walking down the street in the next fifteen minutes.”

“Yeah,” Scott says, “I’m pretty sure we cannot do that.”

Fifteen minutes later, Stiles, looking hang-dog-ish, pulls his ratty scarf a little tighter and blows on his hands. “Okay,” he says. “So maybe – _maybe_ – fifteen minutes was an exaggeration.”

“No shit,” Scott says, but his stomach sinks when he sees the light in Stiles’ eyes. He knows that look; it never means anything good.

“I’ve got it,” Stiles says, smiling like a lunatic. “ _Open auditions_.”

“Fuck me,” Scott says, and resigns himself to his fate.

 

*

 

It turns out that there really isn’t anybody who looks like the long-lost tsarevich of Russia in Saint Petersburg; Stiles is beginning to suspect there isn’t anybody who looks like him in the whole fucking country. It wouldn’t matter so much if any of the people coming in could act worth a damn, but they really, really cannot, and Stiles can be a charming motherfucker when he wants to be but oh, he has no patience for fools.

“Scott,” he moans when the last of them leaves for the day. “I’m going to die, Scott. Make it better.”

“This is your stupid idea,” Scott says placidly. “I’m not going to encourage you.”

“You’re a terrible friend,” Stiles mumbles into the table. “You are the worst.”

Scott claps him on the back cheerily before pulling him up, squawking, by his collar.

“We’ll try something else,” he says. “We could rob banks, maybe; that would be a lot more practical.”

“Robbing banks is so bourgeois,” Stiles says mournfully, and jabs his elbow into Scott’s ribs when he groans. “I want to do something _spectacular_.”

“I don’t know why I even speak to you anymore,” Scott says. “You have the emotional maturity of a five-year-old.”

It’s appropriate, maybe, that that’s the exact moment when Stiles sees _him_ , at the other end of the hallway, looking up at the big mural that’s all that’s left of the Hales, shoulders a little hunched, fists buried deep in his pockets. He turns to the left just enough for Stiles to see his profile, and it’s really all that Stiles can do not to start laughing like an absolute fucking maniac right then and there. Instead he just grabs Scott’s arm hard enough to make him yelp.

“I think I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Stiles whispers. “This is better than sex.”

“I really wish you had a better brain to mouth filter around me,” Scott says, and that’s when the guy turns and looks at them, blinking a second – confused – before scowling, thick brows drawn heavy down over his eyes, bringing up his shoulders defensively, looking like he’s expecting them to beat him up and take his ratty old coat.

Scott wolf-whistles. Stiles practically pisses himself.

“Hi,” he says with a grin. “Well, isn’t this a coincidence.”

 

*

 

He doesn’t know why he came into the stupid abandoned palace anyway – it’s not like it’s any warmer in here than it was outside, and it’s dark, ominous, musty. He keeps getting the feeling that there are people watching him, people he can’t see, although in his defense there do turn out to be people staring at him down one hallway, so maybe he’s not just paranoid.

“Sorry,” he mumbles as they slowly come closer. “Sorry, I know I shouldn’t – I’ll just go, I was just – never mind, it doesn’t matter.” His fingers are practically blue, they’re so cold, but that’s not exactly new. He’ll survive outside for another day, another night.

“No!” the skinnier one says. “No, don’t – stay right there, would you?”

“What?” he says.

“I can’t believe it,” the man says. “I mean, holy _fuck_.”

“It is uncanny,” his friend says, rocking back on his heels.

“What are you _talking_ about?”

They just stare at him for a second before the skinnier one comes forward, hand extended. “I’m Stiles. What’s your name?”

“Derek,” Derek says, staring at the hand in front of him. He doesn’t really remember the last person who tried to shake his hand; the homeless are above such niceties, and Derek has been homeless for a long time.

“Derek,” Stiles says, sounding it out. “That’s not very Russian.”

“Sorry,” Derek says automatically, and Stiles’ face kind of – scrunches up.

“Don’t apologize,” he says. “This is Scott.”

“That’s not very Russian either,” Derek mutters, and Stiles beams, and turns to Scott.

“Look, he even has a sense of humor,” he says, as though Derek’s not standing right there listening to him.

Scott seems unimpressed.

“I need to go,” Derek says, even though he has absolutely nowhere to be, even though it’s – nice, kind of, to have people looking at him like he’s a person, like he actually counts, and talking to him, asking him his name. It’s – it’s nice. It hasn’t happened in a while. It doesn’t matter, though, because if Derek’s learned one thing in his life – at least, in the part of his life that he can remember – it’s to trust nobody, nobody at all.

“What? No,” Stiles says, darting forward to grab Derek’s arm. Derek can’t help the way he flinches away from him; he’s not used to people touching him. He’s never liked it, physical contact; it doesn’t – it doesn’t feel good. He’s never really been sure why, and he hasn’t thought about it much. He tries not to.

“Sorry, sorry,” Stiles says, holding his hands up in front of him. “I just – we really need to – we want to talk to you, okay?”

“Why?” Derek asks, suspicious.

“It’s kind of a long story,” Stiles says earnestly, eyes wide and shining, and Derek thinks it’s okay, maybe, to just – listen to him, for a little bit, to just be there with normal people for a few minutes. He can leave any time, he can – it won’t matter, in the long run, if he just plays along with them. They’re both looking at him like they want him to stay. That’s – different. It’s different.

“Okay,” Derek says, fingers curling in his pockets.

 

*

 

“The sovereign heir of Russia,” Derek says flatly, looking at Stiles as though he might be severely mentally incapacitated. Scott likes him already.

“Yes?” Stiles says, and Derek – Derek _looks down his nose at him_.

It is, Scott has to admit to himself, very imperious. Maybe this is the trick: distracting him with Stiles’ stupidity until he forgets to look terrified of everything.

“You think that I,” Derek says, “am the sovereign heir of Russia.”

“Well, technically, Russia doesn’t exist anymore,” Stiles says. “Like, in a geographical classification sense. And, um, in a ‘you don’t have any power anymore’ kind of sense.”

Derek just stares at him.

“But!” Stiles says. “But! The entire world doesn’t want to kill you! There are lots of people outside Russia who don’t want to kill you!”

“You’re insane,” Derek says. “You are actually out of your mind.”

“Where are you from?” Stiles asks, persistent. He’s leaning forward, vibrating a little. Stiles is an idiot, Scott knows, but – well. There’s a reason neither of them has starved on the street yet, and it’s not because of Scott, that’s for sure.

Derek shrugs, shoulders hunching once again. “Nowhere,” he mutters. “Around.”

“Do you know?” Stiles says.

“Yeah,” Derek says, trying to act offended and failing.

“Where is your family?” Stiles asks. Derek is looking very determinedly at his feet.

“Dead,” he says.

“Do you remember them?” Stiles asks before Scott can say he’s sorry. He keeps his mouth shut instead, watches Derek swallow. Stiles hadn’t asked anybody else these sorts of questions, but none of the rest of them had been orphans. Stiles knows orphans, just like Scott does. And Stiles – Stiles can smell desperation on people. It’s his gift. One of them, anyway.

“Of course,” he says.

“What were their names?”

“Ir– Irina and – Ivan.”

“You’re lying,” Stiles says, not unkindly, though Derek flinches. “It’s – it’s okay, you know. My parents died a long time ago, too. It’s not – it’s not your fault, whatever happened to them. Even if you can’t remember.”

Derek doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move at all, just keeps staring at his feet.

“There’s one Hale left, you know,” Stiles says. “Peter. In Paris. He’s been – he’s been looking for his nephew, for – Dmitri. For a while.”

“Why do you care?” Derek mutters.

Stiles shrugs. “Gives us an excuse to get out of here,” he says. “I wouldn’t say no to a trip to Paris, myself. Would you, Scott?”

“Nope,” Scott says, because that’s what he’s supposed to say.

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Derek says. “I’m not him.”

“I lived in the palace, as a kid,” Stiles says, and here it is: here is Stiles at his brightest, his best, his absolute worst. It’s mesmerizing to watch, even if you’ve seen it time after time over the years, turned on all sorts of people. It never quite matters, in the end, how much Stiles bumbles or what stupid things slip out of his mouth – when he looks like this, when he turns that lighthouse beam onto you, you are _done_.

  
“My parents worked in the palace,” Stiles continues. “I used to – I used to see them all the time, the tsarevich and the princesses. I used to wish I was like them.”

“So what?” Derek mutters, but he’s swallowing convulsively now.

“You look just like him,” Stiles says. “You look exactly like him.”

“No, I don’t,” Derek says, but he says it a long moment later, and that’s when Scott knows they’ve got him.

 

*

 

“We are the worst people in the world,” Scott whispers to him later that night, but Stiles is too keyed up to care, too gloriously, gloriously drunk.

“And soon the richest,” he whispers back, mindful of Derek, who’s sleeping just beyond the door. He raises his dented metal cup of vodka with a wobbling hand before collapsing back on his little bed in their shared attic room, laughing hysterically.

“The _worst_ ,” Scott mumbles before swiping the cup away from him and draining it, trying not to smile.

Stiles just keeps laughing.

  


**_PART THE SECOND: IN WHICH OUR HERO TAKES A BATH AND EMBARKS UPON ON A JOURNEY._ **

Stiles deduces quickly enough that Derek remembers nothing before he was around fifteen years old – Derek doesn’t know how old he is now, but Stiles would bet around twenty-five. He wound up at an orphanage for a year just because the woman who ran it felt sorry for him, and then she kicked him out to make room for kids who couldn’t fend for themselves, who somebody would actually want to adopt. After that – well, Derek hedges a lot, clearly doesn’t like having to talk about himself. Stiles can work with that. It’s just as well, when you’re running a con, to have people who aren’t that talkative involved.

What he does get is that Derek hasn’t been in the same place for more than a few months in nine years, that he’s been on the street more often than not, that his fingernails are caked with dirt, that he doesn’t remember not being hungry. He doesn’t say that explicitly, but Stiles has been hungry a lot of his life, too. He recognizes the signs.

Derek doesn’t like to talk about himself, which is good, and he doesn’t seem incredibly intelligent, which could be an advantage or a disadvantage, depending. The likelihood of him being able to remember all of the information Stiles would like to program into his brain is low.

All of that’s secondary, though, to the fact that, over the course of the few days he’s spent in their company, Derek hasn’t said no to a single thing Stiles asked him to do.

“This is fucked up,” Scott whispers to him the night before they leave Saint Petersburg.

“You gonna spill the beans?” Stiles asks, because Scott won’t; Scott never does.

“I’m just saying,” he says. “It’s like – I dunno, kicking a dog.”

“Scott, we’ve been over this,” Stiles tells him. “This ends with that dude getting a surrogate family and a metric fuckton of money. We are not exactly mistreating him, here. Plus, who knows,” he adds. “Maybe he really _is_ him.”

“Yeah,” Scott says. “Right.”

“I’m telling you, the resemblance is fucking uncanny,” Stiles insists. “I mean, he doesn’t have a babyface anymore, but the timeline works out perfectly.”

“You’re just telling yourself that because it makes you feel better,” Scott says, but that’s not actually true. Scott always ascribes more guilt to Stiles than Stiles actually experiences; it’s the only way he can stand to be around him, Stiles is pretty sure. Derek is a game Stiles is playing, a puzzle – an instrument, maybe. Derek has had nobody to care about him for nine years, and nobody to care about himself, not the way that Stiles has had Scott, ever since his father died and he got hauled off to an orphanage himself. Stiles can be that person, for a little while – and so what if it benefits him, too? He doesn’t dislike Derek; he won’t mind being nice to him. He hasn’t got anything to feel guilty about – Scott’s just too moralistic, and always has been. It doesn’t much matter, though: Scott’s never stopped him from doing exactly what he wants to do.

They get on the train the next morning, battered suitcases in hand. Derek hasn’t got one – they scraped together enough money to get him a new set of clothes but couldn’t afford anything else. The difference respectable clothes and a bath makes is – well, it’s pretty remarkable. Like, transformation from “compelling homeless youth with a striking face” to “profoundly bangable dude” in a matter of minutes.

“If you have sex with him, I’m telling him everything,” Scott said grimly when he caught Stiles ogling.

“Please, I can keep it in my pants in the name of our future fortunes,” Stiles replied, and huffed when Scott raised his eyebrows. “I _can_! I have a masterful amount of self-control.”

“Right,” Scott said. “That sounds totally true and accurate and reflective of past experience.”

Derek _is_ hot, obviously, in a starved kind of way, but Stiles doesn’t actually want to have sex with him; people he has sex with never like him, afterward, which is normally just how he likes it but would be less than ideal as far as Derek goes. Besides, there’s something kind of sad about Derek, a droopy hangdog quality that does not exactly scream “enthusiastic sex partner.” Stiles is just grateful that the tsarevich was pretty, and that Derek is even prettier. Everybody likes a sob story with a happy ending, and they love sob stories with happy endings about pretty people even more. It’s just a fact. It’s practically fucking _science_.

 

*

 

He’s been on trains before, plenty of times, but never anywhere other than in cargo cars, wedged in-between sacks of wheat or corn or crates full of paper, vodka, other things he doesn’t care about. Never anything perishable, never anything that was worth anything, not to Derek. He used to pry off the tops of crates of booze sometimes, get drunk in the cold whooshing darkness of the car, fall asleep with a bottle cradled in his arms. He hasn’t done that in a long time – he got kicked in the stomach one too many times for that to seem appealing.

This is different, though, this is in a passenger car – not a nice one, but nice enough that they’ve got a tiny little compartment to themselves. “Technically, people could sit in those extra seats,” Stiles says, gesturing at the three empty spaces, “but I’m not above harassment and intimidation.”

Derek doesn’t say anything, just sits down gingerly on the seat across from where the two of them have already collapsed, legs splayed messily in front of them. There’s a window and everything, and he has a – a ticket, a real ticket; nobody’s going to kick him off.

“How do you have the money for this?” he asked when Stiles handed it to him, not sure whether to be suspicious or confused, or somewhere in-between the two.

“I’ve got ways,” was all that Stiles said, smiling crookedly at him. Derek doesn’t trust him – he’s not an idiot – but he figures he probably can’t get into more trouble with Stiles and Scott than he would have on his own.

He still doesn’t – _believe_ them, that would be – that would be insane, that would be stupid. Derek isn’t very intelligent but he tries not to be stupid, and trusting people – trusting anybody, but especially people who show up out of nowhere and try to convince you that you’re royalty – is stupid. But it’s not like he’s got anywhere better to be.

“I’m not him,” he said to Stiles the night before they left. “I know you – but I’m – I’m not. I’m really not, I don’t – that’s not me.”

Stiles looked at him, head tilted, eyes slightly uncanny-looking in the candlelight. “I guess none of us will know but Peter,” he said. “But you look like him. I remember what he looked like, before he – went away. You have the same eyes.”

Derek wanted to just snap his eyes shut but he didn’t think he should, didn’t like what that might say about him.

“Do you know what you look like?” Stiles asked, curious.

Derek shrugged. He hadn’t been anywhere with a mirror for a long time, and the shadowy cast of his face in the glass windows didn’t count, he was pretty sure.

“Wait a sec,” Stiles said, and went off, digging through a box of things under his bed. “Here you go.”

The mirror was a little beat-up, cracked down the middle and repaired, and a little smoky, but it worked well enough. Derek blinked, when he saw himself: he wasn’t sure whether he recognized what he was looking at or not. The person in the mirror looked hungry, cheeks sunken, lips too pale. His eyes were sort of grey, sort of something else. He turned it away and handed it back to Stiles.

“So that’s what you look like,” Stiles said, careful not to touch him when he took the mirror, packed it away.

Now he’s got his legs splayed out in front of him, not touching Derek’s, though he’s pressed against Scott from hip to shoulder. Scott is ignoring him, which seems to be what he does, most of the time. Derek can’t really imagine it, ignoring Stiles. He doesn’t seem – ignorable.

“Say goodbye to dear old Russia,” Stiles says, looking out the window at the country flying past them. He doesn’t sound sorry at all. Derek isn’t, either. He hasn’t exactly got anything to miss.

 

*

 

“How many sisters?” Stiles asks Derek, almost lazily, legs kicked up on the free seat across from him. Scott’s moved over to the window seat, directly opposite Derek, who’s frowning with concentration, hand twitching in his pocket.

“Two,” Derek says, and Stiles grins.

“Brothers?”

“One,” Derek replies. “Older. By – two years. He died.”

“Names?”

Derek pauses for a second. “Laura,” he says. “Cora. And – Alexander.”

“Beautiful,” Stiles says, and Derek twitches, looks down at his lap. Scott notices; it’s his job to watch for these things. Stiles doesn’t think so – Stiles gives him other things to do – but Scott knows his responsibilities. He only has two, when it comes down to it: keep Stiles safe, and keep other people safe from Stiles.

“Parents,” Stiles is saying.

“Talia and Alexander,” Derek recites dutifully. He wouldn’t convince a four-year-old, but he’s trying. People usually do, for Stiles.

“We’ll do all the aunts and uncles and cousins and shit later,” Stiles says, waving a hand. “Peter’s the only one who really matters.”

“He’s Talia’s brother,” Derek says. “Younger, by – six years?”

“Seven,” Stiles says. “Close enough.”

“He was his favorite,” Derek continues.

“ _Your_ favorite,” Stiles corrects. “Supposedly.”

Derek flushes. “My favorite,” he mutters.

“Good,” Stiles says.

They stop overnight in some tiny western city that Scott’s never been, haggle with the owner of a run-down inn for a cheap room for the night. They leave Derek one bed to himself while Scott and Stiles get tangled up in the other one, like they used to in the orphanage sometimes, when they were much smaller, and beds seemed to have infinitely more room. Stiles falls asleep first, mouth hanging open near Scott’s shoulder, breath warm and slightly damp. It takes Scott a while, though. Derek is curled up in a ball on the other bed, back to them, shoulders rigid, not moving at all.

In the morning Stiles is still dead to the world, and Derek is sitting in the one rickety chair by the window, staring out into the dawn. He’s turning something over in his hand, a piece of jewelry, maybe.

“Hey,” Scott whispers as he gets out of bed, covering up a yawn and rubbing at his face. Derek tenses. “You get any sleep?”

Derek nods. Scott looks back down at Stiles, who’s curled into the warm spot Scott just vacated.

“Might as well let him sleep a little,” Scott whispers. “Trust me, he’s better on rest.”

Derek doesn’t seem to know how to react to this. He doesn’t say anything.

“What’s that?” Scott asks. Derek’s fist closes tightly around whatever the thing is.

“I didn’t steal it,” he says, quick, defensive.

“I didn’t say that,” Scott says.

“It’s mine,” Derek says, and the particular emphasis he places on the words would be peculiar if Scott were anybody else, had lived anybody else’s life. What Derek means is: _it’s the only thing that’s mine_.

“Where did it come from?” Scott asks.

“I don’t know,” Derek says. His fist hasn’t gotten any looser.

“I won’t tell him if you don’t want me to,” Scott offers, because Derek’s eyes keep flicking over to Stiles in bed. He frowns at Scott after he speaks, dubious.

“I don’t tell him everything,” Scott says, and Derek nods, eventually. It doesn’t mean much, though, Scott figures: it’s not like he can do anything else.

 

*

 

He doesn’t know where it came from, only that he’s always had it, the one beautiful thing he’s ever touched, ever owned. He likes to run his fingers along it, feel the careful grooves along the edges, slide his thumb over the slick dark stone embossed on one side. He wears it, sometimes, close against his skin – that’s safer – but mostly he likes to hold it in his pocket, likes the feeling of it in his hand, a hard indestructible object, something somebody took the time to build, to make perfect.

He likes thinking about how somebody loved him enough to give it to him, when it was finished, even if he doesn’t remember, anymore, who that person was.

  


**_PART THE THIRD: IN WHICH OUR HERO HAS A DREAM, BOARDS A SHIP, AND IS SUBJECT TO A DANCING LESSON._ **

He isn’t sure where he is, only that he is not supposed to be there, and that he is afraid. His breathing is coming a little too fast, his collar pressed a little too tightly against his throat.

“Oh, sweetie,” she says. “Don’t you look pretty.”

He can’t see her, even though he knows she’s there. Maybe if he just – doesn’t turn around, maybe then – maybe she won’t –

“It’s been a while since you’ve looked this pretty, hasn’t it?” she continues, voice closer this time. “I’m not into the homeless look, you know. Dirty and starving doesn’t really do it for me.”

“Go away,” he chokes out. “Just – go away –”

“Now, you know I’m not going to do that,” she purrs, and he wants to flinch away when he feels her hand creep along his shoulder, but he can’t, he can’t, he can’t move at all. “Not when you’re here looking so handsome.”

“Please,” he says, “please, I don’t –”

“I know,” she says, a mockery of sympathy, hand sliding down over his chest, body warm behind his but not touching, not yet. “I know, baby. But I’m all you’ve got now, don’t you know that? I’m waiting for you. Peter doesn’t care about you, he never did. Your cute little boy doesn’t care about you either, you know. He’d probably laugh at you, if you told him what you want to do to him.”

“I don’t – want to do anything –” he starts, and she cuts him off by pressing herself against him, hard. It’s like she’s clapped a hand over his mouth: but she hasn’t. It’s closed all its own.

“Do you want to see me?” she whispers into his ear, and he doesn’t, he doesn’t, but he turns in her hands anyway, and then – and then –

He wakes up panting, heart racing, body shaking, sweating. Scott and Stiles are both asleep in the other bed, breathing slow and even, mindlessly close to each other. He rolls over, away from them, and tries to make himself as small as possible, face pressed into the musty pillow.

When he wakes up again, in the morning, he does not remember that he woke up. He does not remember that he dreamed at all.

 

*

 

Stiles sweet-talks their way onto a little boat that crawls along the coastline of the Baltic, delivering mail. He can, he knows, sweet-talk his way into just about anywhere or anything, and he’ll take a boat over a train any day of the week. Derek looks a little skeptical, but he gets his sea legs quickly enough.

  
“Have you been on boats much?” Stiles asks him, and he frowns.

“No,” he says. “This is the first time.”

“Huh,” Stiles says.

It’s nice out, if cold, and they have the little deck to themselves, so Stiles hangs off the rail for a while like a dog, wind whipping through his hair, sun in his eyes, cheeks bright red. “Come on,” he says after a little while, looking over his shoulder at Derek, who’s still hanging back, away from the edge. “Come on, come _on_.” Derek comes over slowly, stands a couple feet down from him, gingerly resting his arms on the rail.

“Appreciate the beauty of the world,” Stiles tells him, munificent, gesturing expansively at the sea in front of him, the coast. Derek rolls his eyes before he can stop himself, and Stiles grins.

They’re all lounging around later, pretty much out of weird questions to ask Derek about the tsarevich’s extended family and the exact layout of the Winter Palace, because Scott knows these things, for some reason. (“I found floorplans,” he explained to Stiles a couple of nights before, slowly, as though speaking to a child. “I actually did research before we left, unlike _some_ people.”

“I lived there,” Stiles sniffs. “I know the kitchens very well, I’ll have you know.”)

“Ah!” Stiles exclaims, sitting upright. “I’ve got it! _Dancing_.”

Scott and Derek both stare at him.

“What?” Scott says eventually.

“Dancing,” Stiles repeats. “We have to make sure Derek knows how to dance.”

“We’re on a boat,” Scott points out, in a tone that suggests he thinks he’s being reasonable.

“We’re on a motorized boat with no wind or waves,” Stiles argues. “We have an expanse of wood flooring! Free space! Sunshine!”

“No music,” Scott throws in, because he is a killjoy.

“Shut up,” Stiles says. “You can hum some.”

“Oh, fuck no,” Scott says, pushing himself up. “You are on your own. I’m gonna go make the captain talk to me about postal distribution services, or something.”

“Rude,” Stiles mutters once he’s vanished, and turns to Derek.

“Okay,” he says, “we’ll start with a waltz.”

Derek just looks up at him for a moment without moving. He’s sitting with his legs pulled up against his chest and he looks like a kid, smaller than he actually is.

“Come on, I’ll be the girl,” Stiles says, grinning, and Derek slowly unfolds his body and stands up, looking uncertain.

“How do you even know how to do that?” he asks. Stiles shrugs.

“I know how to do a lot of things,” he says, and grins. “Come on, come on.”

He tries not to touch Derek if he can help it, because he doesn’t seem to like it – but this, he figures, is different – or will be different, will be manageable. There are rules to dancing, after all – and he really does need to know how to do it; Stiles remembers, vaguely, peeking through doors and secret cracks in the walls during balls, watching all the people in the big ballroom dance, people who had more money and more things than he would ever have – and more happiness, he thought, too, because they still had mothers, most of them. He remembers the tsarevich dancing with a lot of women who were all older than he was, a little stiffly – “he has to,” Stiles’ father used to tell him, “it’s part of his job” – but without ever making a wrong step that Stiles could see. Stiles didn’t know anything about dancing then, of course, but Dmitri Hale looked like he was doing it perfectly.

“Okay,” he says, “you put one hand on the small of my back, and I’ll put one on your shoulder –”

Derek does it, slowly and a little clumsily, and Stiles reaches up to let his hand rest on his shoulder, which is broad even in spite of the fact that Derek has spent his entire adulthood starving.

“And I’m supposed to rest my hand on top of yours, I think,” he says, and raises his right hand expectantly, waits for Derek to raise his. Derek’s hand is warm, under his fingers, still a little bonier than it probably will.

“Okay,” he says again, grinning at Derek’s expressionless face, and launches into an explanation of the waltz.

He’s always liked the waltz, not that he’s had much occasion to do it: he hums sort of tunelessly as he looks down at their feet, one-two-three one-two-three. Derek is – kind of shockingly good, actually, for all that they’re only doing a simple step. He’s graceful on his feet, even though they’re on a boat, and he doesn’t make a single wrong step, until he lands on Stiles foot hard enough to make him wince.

“Sorry,” he says, and Stiles looks up at his face for the first time in minutes and sees – sees –

“Fuck,” he says, dropping his hands and stepping backward quickly enough that he almost trips over himself and falls. “Fuck.”

“Sorry,” Derek says again, “sorry, I don’t know – why I did – that –”

“Stop apologizing,” Stiles snaps, panicky, and Derek winces.

His skin is pale, clammy, his pallor off, but the worse thing is his eyes, which are wide and terrified. Terror’s not even a strong enough word, Stiles doesn’t think, for what is happening in Derek’s eyes right now.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Stiles asks, even though what he’s thinking is, _why didn’t you notice, you stupid little fuck, you’re supposed to be the observant one_.

“Say – say –” Derek says, or tries to say, looking down at his shaking hands and shoving them in his armpits, but it’s not just his hands that are shaking, it’s his whole body.

“Sit down,” Stiles says, dragging an empty crate from the edge of the boat and turning it over to make a seat. Derek goes without hesitating, face empty, shoulders hunching defensively. Stiles turns over another crate for himself, and sits down next to him, not too close.

“Are you all right?” he asks, but Derek doesn’t seem capable of speech, just stares at nothing in front of him, twitching his head from side to side, rocking back and forth. “Derek,” Stiles says, more gently. “Derek, can you hear me?”

Derek nods, jerkily.

“Derek,” he says again, a minute or two later, when Derek has calmed down a little. “Did something happen to you?” He pauses. “Did you – did somebody do something to you?”

Derek flinches.

“No,” he mumbles.

“Derek,” Stiles says, “it’s – if – if somebody – _did_ – it’s not – it’s not your fault, okay? You didn’t do anything wrong, to – to – you just didn’t, okay? You didn’t.”

“Yes I did,” Derek whispers, voice trembling.

“What did you do?” Stiles asks. “Can you remember?”

“No,” Derek says, but there’s something fatalistic about him now, about his voice, his face. “No, I can’t remember anything.”

“Then how do you know?” Stiles asks.

“I just do,” Derek says. “I just know.”

They sit in silence for a long time, Stiles watching the sea pass while Derek stares at his feet.

“Would it help – would it be easier – if you were the one – doing the touching?” Stiles asks eventually. “Not for dancing, that’s – you don’t have to do that, don’t worry about that. Just, like, for – general life purposes, it might be good to – be able to – do that.”

Derek turns to look at him. He still seems a little fuzzy, forehead creasing in confusion.

“Like – here,” Stiles says, pushing up his sleeve and reaching his hand out between them. His palm’s facing up, his fingers curling gently, at rest.

“You – what?” Derek says, stumped.

“I mean, you don’t like people touching you,” Stiles says. “So you could touch me, maybe.”

Derek stares at his hand for a long, long time, long enough that Stiles is pretty sure he’s not going to do it. He looks out at the water, tries not to think about anything, and then eventually feels the careful, delicate touch of Derek’s fingertips against the back of his hand. He wants to turn, to look at what Derek’s face looks like, but he doesn’t, not when he presses his fingers gently into Stiles’ soft palm, curls his fingers around his. When he finally does turn to look at him, Derek is staring at their hands, shaking a little, but in a different way, Stiles thinks, than before. He uncurls his fingers a little and Derek’s hand slips easily into his. It just sits there, for a moment, until Derek squeezes, gently at first and then so hard it’s almost painful. Stiles curls his fingers back over Derek’s and squeezes just as hard, and watches, a strange feeling in his chest, as Derek shudders, sighs, and drops his head down between his shoulders.

 

*

 

Scott would have come back sooner – he really, really would have – but the captain of the ship was the sort of person who doesn’t have anyone to talk to most of the time and clearly liked listening to the sound of his own voice, so by the time he manages to extricate himself from his clutches, it’s dusky and really cold, the sky pink and mauve and gold over the water.

His stomach drops, and not in a good way, when he sees them, pushed against the side of the boat. Derek is asleep, head tilted over to his shoulder, and his right hand is caught up in Stiles’.

 _Shh_ , Stiles mimes, holding up a finger to his lips before gesturing to Derek. Scott nods. He wants to ask what happened, what’s going on, because they both look exhausted, and not in an “I danced the night away” kind of way.

But he doesn’t, because Stiles turns to look at Derek, leans over him a little, careful to make sure he doesn’t dislodge his hand. Stiles is – is _looking_ at Derek, looking at him like Scott has never seen Stiles look at anybody before, in his life – like he wants to take care of him.

_Fuck_ , Scott thinks, _fuck, fuck,_ fuck, and when they dock an hour later, he follows the two of them out into the city, watching the way Derek falls in behind Stiles like a shadow, and Stiles looks back at Derek with that blinding smile of his, the real one, the one he never uses on anybody but Scott, and even then, never with that much wattage.

 _Fuck_ , Scott thinks again, grimly, a sense of impending doom coiling in his stomach, and prepares himself for the worst.

  


**_PART THE FOURTH: IN WHICH FUTURES ARE DISCUSSED, AND OUR HERO INADVERTENTLY SHARES A BED WITH A COMPANION._ **

It’s not as bad as Scott was expecting.

It is so, so much worse.

He’s known Stiles for a long, long time – ten years, he thinks, now; Stiles was ten when his father died in the Winter Palace, on the same day that the entire royal family was taken away, out of their homes, bodies limp and heavy. Scott wasn’t there – Scott was at home with his mother, who died later. When Scott got to the orphanage, Stiles had already been there for a year, was already good at pretending that he didn’t miss anybody, that he didn’t need anything. Scott’s not sure whether he’d even admit to needing Scott now – and he’s not sure Stiles does need him, exactly, not in the way that he needs Stiles, not in the way that most people need other people. Stiles needs Scott to keep him human, needs Scott to keep him tethered to the world: without Scott, Stiles wouldn’t be a person at all, just a collection of characteristics, of fragments, weird cruelties and talents and occasional kindnesses. He’d break apart.

It’s a lot, to have to do that for somebody else, but Stiles was the one who turned to Scott in the orphanage, who sat next to him at mealtimes and showed him all the secret places in the scraggly yard in the back. Stiles was the one who got into fights with the kids who gave Scott shit, and he always won, even though he was small, because he fought dirty. He didn’t have to do that after a while; Scott grew up, and got tall, and strong. He’s still paying Stiles back; he’ll always be paying Stiles back. It’s not an obligation in a strict sense, or a binding one – it’s something that Scott wants to do. But it is exhausting.

It’s unsettling, watching Stiles with Derek, watch him look at him, lean in close, without touching, watch him smile when Derek says something. It’s like he’s cohering, as a person, not because of anything Derek’s doing but because Stiles is trying, for the first time in Scott’s memory, to listen to him in order to really hear what he’s saying, and not because he’s filing away pieces of information to pull out later, and use.

It would be an incredible thing to witness, Scott thinks, even if it twists his gut a little – it would be impossible to begrudge Derek anything, and Scott wants things and people other than Stiles, in his life, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t strange, to have Stiles’ focus shifted away from him for the first time in years – if it weren’t for the small and unfortunately crucial fact that they _are_ running a con on Derek. Derek, who watches Stiles sometimes when Stiles isn’t looking at him with his big grey-green eyes like he’s hungry, like he’s starving, and looks quickly away when Stiles turns toward him; Derek, who will know, when they get there, if Peter Hale actually believes them, and gives Stiles and Scott all the money they’ve been promised by ads in newspapers.

Scott really, really hopes he just laughs at them, and turns them away, and they’re stuck in some Parisian slum with no money. He thinks he’d prefer that to whatever will happen to Derek when he finds out what Stiles is doing to him, how he has been lied to, and exploited, and used. It won’t matter, then, that Stiles is starting to mean it, that Stiles is starting to care.

Scott doesn’t want to see what happens to Derek, then. He wants to see what happens to Stiles even less.

 

*

 

“You haven’t thought this through at all,” Scott tells him one morning, when they’re out scrounging up breakfast at the crack of dawn. Derek is still asleep; there wasn’t any reason, Stiles figured, to wake him.

“Thought what through?” Stiles asks, peering at the weird German pastries in the bakery window as he fingers the wallet he knicked off of a rich-looking person last night. It’s cold, still; his breath is fogging up the glass.

“You know,” Scott says, and Stiles rolls his eyes.

“I really _don’t_ ,” he says. “I want that one, with the icing.”

“You always want the ones with the icing,” Scott says mildly, and Stiles grins at him, lazy and toothy, over his shoulder.

“You do,” Scott says a moment later, nonsensibly.

“I what?” Stiles says, still gazing at the pastries, trying to figure out one which to get Derek, who doesn’t like sweet things – or, Stiles is beginning to suspect, thinks he’s not allowed to like sweet things, since he always stares at the remnants of Stiles’ breakfast a little too long. Still, there’s no point in antagonizing him; he’ll get him a boring healthy roll or something if he wants. Something with cheese. He’s pretty sure the Germans are meant to be good at cheese.

“You don’t know,” Scott says, “what you’re doing with Derek.”

“I clearly have,” Stiles says. “We’re taking him to Paris, where he’ll make a wildly favorable impression on one Grand Duke Peter Hale, he gets a readymade family, and we get a lifetime’s worth of cash.”

“And you never see him again,” Scott says blandly.

Stiles doesn’t say anything for a moment, and very pointedly doesn’t think about anything at all.

“I guess not,” he replies, as lightly as he can, curling his fingers too hard around the wallet in his pocket. The leather is smooth against his palm; he was right – the man was rich.

“Right,” Scott says. “Okay.”

“He’ll be busy,” Stiles hears himself saying. “With things. People. To see. To do. Things, I mean. To do.”

Scott is silent for a long time.  
  
“You are an idiot,” he says finally, and walks into the bakery without waiting for Stiles to catch up.

Stiles is not an idiot. Derek is – he’s doing Derek a favor, is what he’s doing, even if Derek wouldn’t – might not see it that way. Stiles has been doing this long enough to know that you have to get the mark to trust you, which he’s done. He’s done his job, and he’s good at his job, and it’s worked: Derek trusts him, and Derek trusting him is going to make Derek’s future a whole lot better than it would have been otherwise. Stiles refuses to feel bad about that. He has nothing to feel bad about. He has nothing to feel bad about at all.

Besides, Derek’s been – better, in the last week, than he was before; he’s still terrified of everything and too serious, most of the time, but he rolls his eyes at Stiles sometimes, now, which Stiles is self-aware enough to know is a reasonable reaction to his person. He’s cracked a few jokes, and turned bright red when Stiles laughed – real laughter, surprised straight out of him by Derek’s straight face and flat delivery. Derek might have been funny, if his life had been very different – but it wasn’t. It’s been exactly as it is.

He finds himself itching to touch Derek, sometimes, to see if – just, to see. What he would do. If he would flinch away like he did before. Stiles hasn’t tested it; he’s not an idiot. But he thinks about it. Not a lot, just – sometimes. Derek’s collar has a tendency to sag a little, at the back, when his jacket’s off – he’s too skinny, still, for his shoulders – and Stiles has wondered what he would do if he put his hand there, pink from the cold, maybe. What he would do if Stiles touched the bump at the top of his spine. Or his wrist, maybe, the bones protruding knobbily. His wrist, and then the soft warm stretch of skin at the center of his palm. Whether Derek’s fingers would curl in over his, again, or whether he’d just yank his hand away.

He thinks about it sometimes. Not much, though, not often. Not often enough to notice, really. It’s a passing thought, more than anything. That’s all.

 

*

 

When he comes into the room, having left Scott arguing with the owner at the desk downstairs, Stiles is already sprawled over one of the beds, shirt untucked and rucked up, revealing the dip of his white white stomach and the dark hair in the center, leading down. Derek swallows. When Stiles sees him, he grins crookedly and props himself up on his elbows.

“He still arguing?” Stiles asks, and Derek nods, trying very hard not to look at his stomach.

“Scott’s good at haggling,” Stiles says, flopping back down, limbs akimbo. “He said he’d go haggle for food after, too. Man’s got a magic touch.”

Derek turns to look at the second bed, which is bare, the sheets and blankets folded at the end. He used to make beds at the orphanage, a long time ago. He could do it again, probably, messily.

“Oh, come on,” Stiles says around a yawn. “Don’t worry about that, Scott’ll do it when he gets back. His mom was a nurse, you know. Hospital corners.”

Which leaves Derek standing awkwardly between the two beds, unsure of himself, trying not to wring his hands because Stiles has told him it doesn’t seem very noble or dignified. Stiles blinks up at him a second later, realizing he’s there, and rolls his eyes, shifting over pointedly and slapping the bed next to him.

Derek doesn’t do anything for a moment but stare.

“Come _on_ ,” Stiles says. “There’s plenty of room.”

And there is – he’s lying on it in the wrong direction, legs hanging off: there’s lots of room. Derek hesitates for a moment before sitting down gingerly a couple feet down from him.

“Come on, come on,” Stiles says and tugs at the back of his jacket, light, careful. Derek shivers anyway, and lays back when Stiles removes his hand.

“Don’t worry, I don’t bite,” Stiles says, grinning, eyes fuzzy with exhaustion. It’s been a long day.

“I know,” Derek says, and looks pointedly away from Stiles’ face to the ceiling.

“You’re no fun,” Stiles yawns, and Derek’s fingers twitch against his stomach.

“I know,” he says quietly.

“Oh, don’t – I was only teasing,” Stiles says, voice softer, and when Derek turns hesitantly to look at him he’s curled on his side, watching him, eyes big in his sharp face. He should eat more, Derek thinks.

“Okay,” he says.

“You’re funny,” Stiles says, and Derek snorts before he can help himself. “You _are_ ,” Stiles insists.

“I’m not,” Derek says. He’s pretty sure nobody has ever called him funny before.

“You are,” Stiles says sadly.

“I’m really not,” Derek says, and Stiles sighs.

“Someday you’ll have lots of – noble acquaintances, or whatever, telling you you’re funny,” Stiles says, yawning again. “You’ll have to believe them eventually.”

He’s rolled over too, he realizes, like Stiles did, a long stretch of bed between them.

“I don’t want lots of noble acquaintances,” he says, totally honestly.

“Course you do,” Stiles says. “Or you will, anyway.”

Derek swallows. “Where are – where are you going to go, after? After you – you know.” His voice sounds small even to his ears. Stiles shrugs.

“Dunno,” he says.

“He’s not going to take me in anyway,” Derek points out. “We could – go somewhere.”

“He’ll take you,” Stiles says, and suddenly he sounds old. “He’ll take you.”

“He won’t,” Derek says. “But you could – even if, you know – you could stay. If you wanted to.”

Stiles looks at him for a long moment, eyes golden in the candlelight. “You won’t want me around,” he says.

“I will,” Derek insists, but Stiles just shakes his head, very slowly.

“No,” he says. “You won’t.”

He falls asleep not much longer after that, and Derek lets the candle burn down to nothing, watching him, as he tries to imagine not wanting Stiles around. It’s impossible. He can’t do it.

When he wakes up, it’s the morning, Scott’s snoring quietly in the next bed, and he and Stiles, still in their clothes, have moved closer together in the night – but they aren’t touching. Derek closes his eyes.

  


  
**_PART THE FIFTH: IN WHICH OUR HERO ARRIVES IN PARIS, AND SHARES A BED WITH A COMPANION SOMEWHAT MORE DELIBERATELY._**

They arrive in Paris by train at the crack of dawn, stumbling blearily out of the Gare du Nord onto the wide grey boulevard, the sun peeking up behind the buildings, the sky the color of a bruise.

“Jesus Christ,” Scott says, and Stiles stops to smell the Paris air, to try to tell whether it’s different here than it has been other places. Derek’s standing next to him, looking vaguely cowed.

“Yes,” Stiles says eventually. “Jesus Christ.”

They find a little run-down boarding house in Montmartre next to a building that is definitely a brothel and leave their bags in the luggage room before leaving again, sagging from fatigue, from the sharp nip of the cold.

“Come on,” Stiles says. “Let’s go.”

They wander around Paris drunk on exhaustion and on the strange sounds of the people speaking around them, on bread Stiles managed to purchase with his rudimentary French and crepes made with mysterious ingredients. Derek’s cheeks are pink from the cold and Stiles wants to put his hands on them, cover them up, but his fingers are freezing, too.

Paris is a circle, somebody told him once: you just walk and walk and eventually you hit the middle, the center, the islands and the river. You walk and walk past old stone buildings and Juliet balconies and hibernating trees, stones uneven beneath your feet, and you get closer and closer to the quai de la Seine, to the Ile-St-Louis, to Notre Dame. There are pigeons everywhere, and bundled up girls on bicycles, and cigarette smoke, and booksellers on street corners. Stiles has never liked any other place so much. It’s a pity he’s going to have to leave.

“Wow,” Derek says when they’re standing in front of the great cathedral, stone white in the overcast winter light. Everywhere Stiles turns, everything is grey: the roofs and the buildings and the sky and the river. It’s beautiful.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, craning his head up to look at the building – they’d come from the opposite direction, seen the buttresses first, the windows, from the outside. “Wow.”

Scott goes off to search for more food and leaves them there, tucked behind the cathedral, watching the crowd antagonize the pigeons. Stiles rubs his hands together and blows on them, fingers chapped from the cold, and even with the vague sense of impending doom, he’s not sure he’s ever been as happy in his entire life as he is right now, in this foreign city, standing next to Derek watching pigeons and the sky and the entire act of life happening around them, and then Derek reaches out to pull his hands into his sleeves, Stiles’ frozen fingers burning against the skin of his wrists, and when Stiles looks over Derek isn’t looking at him, is looking out into the distance, and Stiles – this is when he finally admits it to himself – wants to kiss him.

 

*

 

“Hmm,” the redheaded woman says, looking Scott up and down with an unimpressed expression. He tries not to look like a con artist and probably fails miserably. He knows perfectly well that he’s got an endearing, innocent quality about him, but he is also prone to a whole lot of guilt. It has been known to show on his face.

“Well,” she continues a moment later. “I’m sure Archduke Hale will be happy to see you tomorrow morning. At, say, eleven?”

“Sure,” Scott says, relieved.

“Wonderful,” the woman says, in the tone of someone who couldn’t give less of a fuck. Scott swallows. “He’ll be thrilled to see you and your… friends… then, I’m sure.”

“Thanks very much, ma’am,” he says, bowing a little, and starts to shuffle out, feeling awkward in his nice (well, nice-ish) suits.

“Just a moment, please,” the woman says, and he pauses. The woman looks at him for a moment and sighs.

“Mr. McCall,” she says, and then pauses. “Mr. McCall, I’m going to be very honest with you.”

 _Oh, shit_ , Scott thinks, and doesn’t have time to think anything else before she’s off.

“I don’t know whether you are the mastermind behind this little stunt,” she tells him, not angry but kind of clinically detached. “You don’t really seem like the type. I’m just telling you now that you are not the first people to try this out, and if you think that Hale doesn’t know exactly what his nephew looked liked and acted like, then you’re out of your mind.” She pauses. “So unless you are very, very confident indeed, I strongly recommend retiring early. The Archduke doesn’t like his time wasted. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

Scott swallows and watches as she taps her perfect fingernails against the notebook.

“Yes,” he says.

“Good,” she says. “Have a nice day.”

He leans against the closed door for a second, waiting for his heart to slow down before he flees.

He finds Stiles and Derek in the Tuileries where he left them, huddled together on a bench – _for warmth_ , Stiles would say, eyes wide and innocent. _For warmth_. There’s a fine layer of snow on the ground and their breath is clouding in front of them. They haven’t noticed him, so he watches them for a second, heads bent together, Stiles whispering something that’s making Derek laugh – or, well, making Derek do what he does instead of laughing, which is kind of snort to himself under his breath.

“Hey,” Scott says, and both their heads snap up to look at him.

“What’s up?” Stiles asks.

“Nothing,” Scott says. “Nothing to worry about.”

It is, though – of course it is; of _course_ it’s something to worry about. They haven’t spent much time in the past month-and-some discussing the fact that the Hales have a reputation for unpleasantness, for brutality; haven’t discussed how easy it was for a few charismatic leaders to convince the people to depose them. The Hales were not popular. Scott doesn’t now much about Peter, specifically – he was young, when everything happened, and Peter was never a very public figure – but he’s pretty sure nothing he could do would surprise them.

They get by the rest of the day on warm baguettes and sticky cheese, and it’s not until Derek’s taking a bath that night – “you gotta be clean to meet royalty, dude,” Stiles told him – that Scott gets a chance to talk to Stiles alone. It’s much harder than it used to be, as of late, but Scott doesn’t even have time to feel a little bitter about that, because there isn’t any time. There just isn’t.

“The woman today,” he whispers, almost under his breath. “Archduke Hale’s – secretary, or whatever. She was fucking _terrifying_ , dude.”

Stiles blinks up at him, that look in his eyes that Scott hates, the shuttered one, the one that says Stiles isn’t really listening to him at all.

“They’ve been getting loads of people, coming in, claiming to be – him,” Scott continues. “The – Dmitri.”

“So?” Stiles asks, cool, maddening.

“You fucking – you are such a fucking idiot,” Scott hisses. “The Hales are – nasty, okay, they’re not going to just – they’re going to act like a bunch of fucking dicks about this when they realize we are just fucking with them, okay?” He exhales, long and shaky, tries not to feel as angry as he knows he is. “There is no point to this. There was never any point to this, but it didn’t matter when you didn’t give a shit about him. I mean, it – it does, obviously, it matters that we’re fucking assholes, okay, but not – you know what I mean.”

“Not really,” Stiles says, distant, and Scott wants to grab his shirt, to haul him up, standing, and hit him to knock him back down again.

“You do this, you know,” he says. “You get this look in your eye like you’re not a person anymore. Like you don’t care about anyone.”

Stiles swallows, but the look in his eyes doesn’t change at all. “I don’t,” he says, calm, and Derek comes out of the bathroom.

 

*

 

He lies awake in bed for a long time, anxiety a hot knot in his gut. He doesn’t – he’s not expecting anything, really. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t want it to be real, anyway. It’s – it would be complicated. It would be more complicated.

He’s having trouble sleeping.

He’s not sure what time it is when he hears Stiles get out of bed and walk to the bathroom, too steadily for someone who was just asleep. He’s in there for a while, and Derek turns his head to look at the sliver of light under the door. He means to close his eyes before Stiles comes out, but he’s not fast enough, and Stiles notices, even though it’s dark – of course he does. He doesn’t move for a second, just stands in the dark doorway, and then walks slowly in-between the beds, crouches down so his head is close to Derek’s.

“Having trouble sleeping?” he asks, whispering. Derek shrugs as best as a person can shrug lying down. Stiles watches him for what feels like a very long time, eyes cloudy in the gloom.

“Can I get in?” he asks eventually, and Derek blinks, surprised.

“Sorry,” Stiles says immediately. “Sorry, that was – that was dumb.”

“It’s okay,” Derek whispers, and pushes back on the bed a little, making space. Stiles just stares at him for a moment before standing up and getting in, curled up too tightly to possibly be comfortable. They aren’t touching.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “I couldn’t sleep either.”

“Are you nervous?” Derek asks, genuinely curious. Stiles doesn’t seem like the sort of person who is ever nervous, but he lets out a grim little laugh.

“Yes,” he says, shifting around on the bed a little.

“Oh,” Derek says.

“Are you?” Stiles asks.

“Yes,” Derek says, after a minute of deciding whether he should decide at all.

“Sorry,” Stiles whispers.

“It’s not your fault,” he says, and Stiles makes a weird sound, somewhere between laughing and choking.

“Yeah,” he says. “Right.”

In the morning, Derek is the first of the three of them to wake up. Stiles is lying all over him and his breath is puffing damply against the underside of his chin and he isn’t sure how to feel – it’s not – it’s weird, still; part of him thinks touching people will always be weird. But it’s not – bad, exactly. He doesn’t really mind.

Stiles wakes up next, eyes flickering slowly open, and when he realizes where he is he goes very still. “Sorry,” he whispers a moment later, voice sleep-rough, and something inside of Derek _hurts_.

“S’okay,” he mumbles, and when Stiles carefully levers himself up and off, Derek feels cold.

Nobody says anything while they all get dressed in their suits, and Scott barely looks at either of them. Stiles ignores him, though, so Derek figures he can, too, and when he has trouble with his tie Stiles comes over and fixes it, smiling at him a little, lips twitching, looking miserable.

“All right,” he says when he’s finished. Scott’s looking out the window. “All right,” Stiles says again. “Let’s go.”

  


**_PART THE SIXTH: IN WHICH OUR HERO IS REUNITED WITH AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE, AND COMES TO AN IMPORTANT REALIZATION._ **

 It is no use, anymore, telling himself that he isn’t anxious, that he doesn’t care: because he does, he does, he cares too much, impossibly more than he is supposed to. It feels as though he has been wrapped up in something – cloth that doesn’t breathe, or maybe metal, steel – and shrunk down inside of himself, as though his body is a shell through which he’s peering out distantly at the rest of the world.

Derek is standing too close to him, like always, but it feels like what is happening to him belongs to someone else, has done ever since he looked over at Derek in the shadows of the cathedral and felt the clench of desire deep in his gut, that he couldn’t do anything about at all, couldn’t ignore or act on or run away from. He just stood there, feeling the blood running through Derek’s veins beneath his slowly warming fingertips, and tried to remember that he was supposed to be breathing.

He has been letting Derek walk too close to him, and lean into him; he has tried to make him laugh – has tried to be funny – but it’s cold, all of it. It makes him feel cold. He cannot remember ever feeling this bad in his life, about anything, except the sight of his dead father, the one last glimpse he had of him before he turned and ran. And even that was different: that was pure dumb horror; this is something else. This is something clawing out of him, something that keeps making his hands shake and his mouth go dry. He feels like he is going to vomit all the time and he doesn’t know how to make it stop. His body – his stupid fucking unforgivable body – is betraying him and he doesn’t know what to do about it.

He lay awake for hours, trying to keep himself still enough that he wouldn’t wake Scott. Scott was angry with him. Stiles didn’t have the energy to be angry with anybody right now, except maybe at his body for what it was doing to him.

He shouldn’t have – done that. What he did. He shouldn’t have gotten in the bed with Derek; that was stupid. That was – it was stupid. It was foolish. It was easier to fall asleep there, though, and the – the split second, after he’d woken up, before – before he realized – what he’d done – it was good. Derek was broad and malnourished and warm against him and he wanted to turn his face into his chest and open his hot mouth wide over Derek’s long johns – but he didn’t. He moved away, instead. That, at least, was the right thing to do.

Scott doesn’t look at him the entire way to the Archduke’s residence, but Derek sticks close, even closer than before, though Stiles wouldn’t have thought that possible. He is visibly nervous – Stiles isn’t, he doesn’t think; even his fingers have stopped shaking. He is almost numb.

Scott knocks on the door when they get there, and it’s only at the last second that it all comes rushing in, the weight of it, of what he’s doing and what he has done. He doubles over, almost, and Derek goes stiff next to him, leans down to make sure he’s all right.

“Is he okay?” he hears Scott ask, as though from very far away.

“Stiles?” Derek asks, and – touches his shoulder, touches his face with cold hands. Stiles shivers.

“Don’t do it,” he whispers. “Don’t – don’t go in there, don’t – don’t –”

But Derek is just frowning down at him, and somebody is opening the door, and ushering them all inside, and before he knows it they are standing in some kind of grand receiving room, full of more opulent things than Stiles has ever seen in his life. It’s so startling different from the room they’ve come from, from all the rooms in which he’s lived, that it’s almost nauseating.

“Good morning,” the tiny redheaded woman says when the servant lets them into the room. Stiles shoves his sweaty shaking hands into his pockets and hangs back, trying not to throw up.

“You must be, ah, Dmitri,” the woman says, in tones conveying extreme skepticism.

“Derek’s fine,” Derek says, shifting awkwardly.

“Derek,” she says icily. “Excellent.”

Stiles can barely listen when she starts asking him questions, deceptively casual at first and then with increasing sharpness. It’s becoming harder and harder for him to breathe, but it would be worse if anyone were looking at him, infinitely worse, so he makes himself do it, in and out, in and out.

Derek’s mechanical but he doesn’t get anything wrong, at least not that Stiles can tell from the rhythmic lull of his voice and the woman’s – she introduced herself, but he can’t remember what she said her name was. He doesn’t sound hugely – believable, though. It’s a show, it’s a fucking circus: he’s being made to seem a fool and it is _all Stiles’ fault_.

His vision goes blurry.

And then he hears her say:

“Well, Derek, I’m just not sure I understand how you got _out_ of the palace,” the woman says, tapping her nails against her little notebook.

“I –” Derek says unsurely, but at least he doesn’t glance over at Stiles or Scott, which is something. “I’m not – I’m not sure.” He swallows: Stiles is watching him closely, now.

“You’re not sure?” the woman says.

“I think – I think it was through the kitchen,” he begins to say, slowly, sounding like he’s thinking aloud. “I, um – there was a – a secret passage? Down there?” He pauses. “I think there was a, um, a boy, who – helped me get – out. In the kitchen, a – he was younger.”

Scott is looking at Derek sharply, now, Lydia skeptically, and Stiles can’t help himself, can’t help the low, sick feeling unfurling in his gut: he starts to laugh.

 

*

 

Miss Martin looks at Stiles sharply when he starts to laugh. Scott has never seen that look on his face before: like there’s something huge and gaping and empty behind it.

“Stiles?” Derek says hesitantly.

“Oh my god,” Stiles says, practically choking on air, it sounds like. “Oh my fucking god.”

“What?” Scott asks. Miss Martin’s eyes have narrowed and her fingers are tight on her notebook and pen.

Stiles turns to look at him, a sick smile spread across his face, still laughing uncontrollably. “It’s him,” he says. “It’s fucking – it’s actually him.”

“What?” Scott asks again, feeling slow, stupid.

“What?” Derek asks, shoulders hunched.

“I think you had better explain yourself, Mr. Stilinksi,” Miss Martin says coldly.

“That was me,” Stiles says. “I was the boy in the kitchen.”

They all stare at him for a long moment before Miss Martin snaps her notebook closed.

“I am finished,” she says, “with liars, and thieves, and crooks.” Derek stiffens, looking wounded, and she sighs.

“Not you,” she clarifies. “You’re just an idiot. They,” she continues, gesturing to Scott and Stiles, “are crooks.”

“I don’t –” Derek starts, and Scott can practically see Miss Martin trying not to roll her eyes.

“I’m sure you’re aware that there’s a terrifyingly large reward promised to whoever turns up here with the tsarevich,” she says. “We have been entertaining quite a few liars, of which your friends seem to be two.”

Derek looks like someone has slapped him in the face.

“Find new friends,” she suggests. “Try to be less of a fool.”

“No, you don’t – _it’s him_ ,” Stiles says, pointing at Derek with one shaking finger. “I’m not – I was lying, okay, but I’m telling you, I’m _telling you_ , I was down there, I remember –”

“Then why didn’t you remember ten minutes ago?” Miss Martin asks, impatient, but Scott’s not really paying any attention to her, or to Stiles, even: he’s watching Derek, who’s folding in on himself in front of Scott’s eyes.

“Derek,” he says, heart beating hard in his chest suddenly. “Derek, do you – do you have – your necklace, the thing you carry around –”

Derek turns to look at him, eyes cloudy and traumatized.

“ _Derek_ ,” Scott says. “I’m – please, please, do you have it.”

And Derek reaches one shaking hand into his pocket, and pulls out the weird little pendant, and Miss Martin goes very still.

“Where did you get that,” she asks, sharp, and Derek’s hand clenches instinctively around the pendant.

“It’s mine,” he says. “I’ve always had it.”

“But you don’t remember anything from before you were fifteen,” she says. “Or thereabouts.”

“I’ve always had it,” he repeats, pressing his fist against his chest.

“Okay,” she says, much more sympathetically, although her eyes still look calculating. “Okay, but I recognize it.”

“What?” he asks, sounding almost drunk.

“I recognize it,” she says, and turns toward the door. “Isabel! Tell the Archduke to come in immediately, and to bring his music box.”

They all stand there for a minute, waiting, looking nauseated. Scott certainly _feels_ nauseated. Derek looks like a caged animal, something fundamentally gone from his eyes, and Stiles is staring at him with a kind of naked hunger that’s practically animalistic. Scott wants to close his eyes so he doesn’t have to look at them anymore, but he can’t.

And then Peter Hale walks in the room.

“This had better be good,” he says, faux-casual. He’s holding something in his hand – a music box, that looks like it’s missing a piece.

“This young man seems to have the last part of your music box,” Lydia says, and Peter turns to Derek, focuses in on him.

“Does he now,” he says, and smiles.

 

*

 

He doesn’t want to show it to them, doesn’t want to talk to the man who’s just come in the door, doesn’t want to look at Stiles. He really doesn’t want to look at Stiles. But he can’t do anything else, can’t help but open his hand when Miss Martin and Scott are asking him, are looking at him like that. What else is he going to do? It doesn’t really matter anymore, anyway.

He doesn’t recognize him, Peter, when he looks up and sees him. He looks like a stranger. But he’s holding a little – a music box, and it looks – it looks like it matches the pendant Derek is holding, that he has gotten used to pressing into his palm over the years, the metal getting warm against his skin.

“Remarkable,” Peter says. “Can you give me that, my boy?”

Derek tries not to shudder, and his hand jerks out automatically. Peter takes the pendant from him and inspects it for a moment before setting the music box down on top of the piano and clicking the missing piece into the top.

It starts playing a – a song, a song that Derek recognizes, that he knows; he feels it in his bones. It makes him freeze up. It’s – he doesn’t know where he knows it from, but he knows it, and it’s horrible, it’s awful, it’s making his skin crawl and his palms sweaty and he wants it to stop, wants to grab the music box and smash it on the floor, but he can’t, he knows he can’t, that wouldn’t be allowed.

“Dmitri,” Peter says, smiling slowly, and – yes. Derek recognizes him now. He doesn’t remember him, but he recognizes him.

 _My name is Derek_ , he wants to say, but his tongue is heavy in his mouth, so he doesn’t say anything at all.

Miss Martin stays in the room with him when Peter ushers Scott and Stiles out – “to negotiate the terms of their reward,” she explains once they’ve gone – and Stiles looks over his shoulder at him once, something wild and dark in his eyes that Derek doesn’t recognize and doesn’t want to see. He looks away, and then looks back immediately when it occurs to him that he might never see Stiles again – he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to, but it – it – he doesn’t want to think about it – but the door is already closing behind them.

“Sorry,” Miss Martin says a moment later, sounding almost sympathetic. Derek swallows, and tries to speak, and comes up with nothing.

Peter comes back and smiles at him again, and makes vapid small talk that Derek doesn’t really follow. He leads him around the house – it’s a mansion, really – and tells him what all the rooms are for, but Derek knows he won’t remember any of their functions: they are big and sumptuous and he doesn’t know what he would do in any of them. He knows now, he supposes, that he spent the first fifteen years of his life in rooms like these, but he can’t – he doesn’t _remember_ that, not really: scraps of things, maybe; glimpses. What he remembers is starving, and being alone, and the rattle of dark train cars in the night, and the dingy little hotel rooms he’s been staying in for the past month, with Stiles and Scott: he remembers the feeling of Stiles’ hand under his and Stiles’ cold fingers against his skin and Stiles warm body curled around his like he belonged there.

He thinks he’s probably going to be sick.

He sits through dinner without listening to anything Peter says – in a few days, he said earlier, they were going to have a, a ball of some kind – to introduce Derek to – everyone. Derek doesn’t want to be introduced to anybody, doesn’t want to dance with anybody, either, wants Peter to stop calling him Dmitri. _That’s not my name_ , he wants to say. _Stop calling me that_. But he knows somehow that he can’t say no to Peter, that it’s not allowed – not just because Peter is rich and powerful and the only member of his family left, but because he just – he just can’t. It’s not how it works.

He wants to leave, sneak out when nobody is watching him (but somebody always is), and find Scott and Stiles and hit Stiles hard across the face, hit him until his lip is split and his nose is bleeding, broken, maybe, his eyes blooming with bruises. He wants to curl up and press his face against the soft concave of Stiles’ stomach and wants Stiles to – to touch him, his shoulders, his back, everywhere; wants Stiles to whisper in his ear that there’s been some terrible mistake, that he didn’t mean any of it, that he – that he – that he would –

But Derek isn’t going anywhere.

He goes to bed in a bed so plush and comfortable that it takes him forever to fall asleep, instead, and when he does fall asleep he hears the song again, and he wants to find it, to make it stop, but he can’t move.

“I knew you’d make it,” she says from above him, and he can hear her smiling, and it makes his stomach drop.

“Go away,” he whispers, but she just laughs, leans down harder. He still can’t see her: it’s too dark.

“I don’t think so,” she murmurs, sing-song. “I don’t think so, baby.”

“Please leave me alone,” he begs, “please, please, just –”

“You like that music, hmm?” she asks him, and he flinches away when fingers touch his hair. “You remember our special song?”

“No,” he chokes out, but she just laughs again.

“Liar,” she says. “Oh, sweetie, you remember it too well, you just don’t want to think about it. It’s okay, I’ll be back soon enough. We can talk about it all you want.”

“I don’t,” he says, but he does, sort of: he remembers _something_ , somebody above him, not being able to move, a hand on his chest, fingers in his mouth. He tries to keep his breathing normal but he’s pretty sure he’s failing.

“Yes you do,” she hums, sounding closer. There’s a hand on his chest, now, just like – before –

“Please,” he manages one more time, “please leave me alone.”

“Your uncle never said that to me, sweetheart,” she whispers, and when she leans forward she’s – _there_ – and he can see her, and he – recognizes her, even though her skin is – decayed, her body crumbling –

“Remember me now?” she smirks, and when Derek wakes up, he’s screaming.

  


**_PART THE SEVENTH: IN WHICH OUR HERO FACES A DILEMMA, AND THERE IS A FINAL RECKONING._ **

 Scott would not have thought, years ago in the orphanage, that being befriended by Stiles would ultimately mean sneaking into the Archduke of Russia’s residence in Paris in order for Stiles to chase after the homeless man of his dreams, but he’s gotten very good, over the years, at rolling with the punches. He’s still angry with Stiles, still wants to punch him in his stupid face, but he did just as much to deliver Derek into Peter Hale’s sharp, expectant teeth, so he figures he can’t really complain right now. Later, maybe, if they don’t get thrown into prison. Or especially if they do, he guesses. Scott has _grievances_.

Still, though. Peter Hale is a scary motherfucker.

A week ago, when Scott walked out of that ridiculous receiving room, Stiles staggering next to him like a drunk man or a dying one, he thought maybe that Peter would take them into another room – an office, maybe, or somewhere with a table, at least, and some chairs. Instead he stopped in the foyer and turned to them, eyes cold and calculating, and gestured for a servant, in whose ear he murmured some instruction that Scott couldn’t hear.

“So,” he said, when the servant had dashed away, looking sort of terrified. “The two of you seem to have gotten incredibly lucky.”

“You could say that,” Scott said, or rather croaked. Stiles didn’t say anything at all.

“I’m going to give you a significant sum of money,” Peter said, “and then you are going to leave, and if I ever see either of your faces again, I will kill you myself. Do I make myself clear?”

“Uh,” Scott said.

“I don’t want your money,” Stiles said, hoarse. “I don’t – keep it.”

“I’m a man of my word,” Peter said, smiling slowly. His teeth looked sharp. “I don’t back down on my word.”

“I said I don’t _want_ it,” Stiles said, practically vibrating next to him. Scott wanted to drag him out of there before he could say anything else but he was pretty sure that leaving before Peter explicitly dismissed them would be a terrible idea. “I don’t – I don’t –”

“Whether you want it or not,” Peter said calmly, as the servant came back, carrying two bags that looked too heavy for him to manage on his own, “you are getting it. And then you are leaving, and not coming back. Do you understand me?”

Stiles just looked at him, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “Yes,” Scott said, reaching out to take the bags. “Yes, sure, sounds great, we’ll never bother you again, have a nice day.”

“Excellent,” Peter said, and smirked, and nodded to the servant to show them to the door.

“I don’t know – I don’t know how I didn’t – realize,” Stiles said once they’d gotten back onto the sidewalk, shaking so badly and swerving so drastically from left to right that Scott was pretty sure he was going to get himself run over in the street. “I’m so stupid, I’m so stupid, I’m so fucking stupid, oh fuck, oh fuck, Jesus.”

“I mean, I’m not going to argue with you,” Scott said, “but please don’t get yourself killed.”

“We have to get him out of there,” Stiles said, turning to look at Scott with wide, manic eyes. “We have to – did you see him? Did you fucking _see_ him? He’s a fucking nightmare, he’s – he’s –”

“Peter?” Scott asked. “Peter will _kill us_ , dude. He will fucking – he will literally murder us. We will be _dead_.”

“I can’t leave him there,” Stiles said, voice breaking. “Scott, I can’t – I can’t do it, I can’t – I can’t just – leave him – with _him_ –”

“Well, I don’t see how you plan to do anything else,” Scott told him, grim. “I think he’s probably got pretty good security.”

The answer came three days later, with a newspaper headline trumpeting the triumphant return of Prince Dmitri Hale alongside a picture of Derek looking awkward and uncomfortable. Peter was standing next to him, a hand on his shoulder, smiling widely.

“They’re having a celebratory ball on Saturday,” Stiles said, thrusting it at Scott, who was still half-asleep in their shitty little room at the same boarding house, because Stiles didn’t want to spend any of their money.

“A what?” Scott asked, muzzy.

“A ball,” Stiles said, looking deeply out of his mind. “We’re going.”

“We’re what?” Scott asked, alarmed, and that was how he found himself sneaking into Peter Hale’s house and hoping nobody was about to drag him out back and strangle him.

“This is still a terrible idea,” he mutters to Stiles as they sneak in through the back entrance, making sure not to mess up their tuxedos too badly.

“Don’t be pessimistic,” Stiles says, and suddenly they are there, amongst all the people, chattering away in French, wearing fancy dresses and ridiculous jewelry, all trying to get a glimpse of the tsarevich, who doesn’t seem to be anywhere.

“All right,” Stiles says, cracking his knuckles. “Time to get down to business.”

 

*

 

There is an unholy number of people in Peter’s mansion, which is just as well, given that it’s in their best interests to maintain a low profile. Unfortunately that means that finding Derek is nigh on impossible, especially since it seems like he may not actually be attending his own party. Stiles isn’t hugely surprised; everyone here seems like a nightmare, and Derek doesn’t exactly seem cut out for huge social gatherings.

He does find him eventually, though, Scott following him, grumbling under his breath. Nobody pays any attention to them at all, and the one time he catches a glimpse of Peter he just turns the other way, snakes them around a group of bedecked middle-aged women and into the next room, heart beating a little faster than normal. He should be more worried, he thinks, more paranoid, but he’s – not, really. He feels very far away from himself, from everything that is happening to him. He just knows that he needs to find Derek. He is going to find him, whether he wants to be found or not.

Stiles can be very determined, when he sets his mind to something.

He finds him a corridor, eventually, behind the biggest room, huddled in a shadow, shoulders hunched, looking at his feet. He is wearing an outrageous outfit and somebody has given him a haircut. It looks – good. It would look better if he didn’t look like he wanted to slit his wrists.

Stiles swallows.

“Um,” he says, and Derek flinches a little, on instinct, before he looks up and sees who’s talking, and then – flinches again, harder.

“What are you doing here?” he asks woodenly.

“I, um, I snuck in,” Stiles says. “With Scott. We snuck in.”

“Hey,” Scott mutters from behind him, where he’s watching the door for signs of Peter.

“You should leave,” Derek says. “You’re not supposed to – you should leave.”

“I was – worried,” Stiles says. “About – um. About – you –”

Derek’s face does something strange, something twisted and bitter.

“Right,” he says. “Okay.”

Stiles takes another step closer and Derek steps backward, into the light of a wall sconce, and Stiles realizes that despite his get-up he looks – he looks _bad_ , pale and sickly – off.

“Are you all right?” he asks, because it kind of looks like Derek’s about to pass out.

“You don’t care if I’m all right,” Derek says, lips curling. “You don’t – you don’t give a shit.”

“I do,” he says, “Derek, I – I do, I _do_ care, I –”

“I don’t ever want to see you again,” Derek says, voice shaking. “I don’t – I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want to listen to your – bullshit –”

  
“I’m not bullshitting,” he says, “I swear to god, I’m not –”

“Would you just _stop_ ,” Derek says, and he sounds like he’s begging. His cheeks are sunken and there’s a faint sheen of sweat on his face. “Would you just – _leave me alone_ –”

“He’s a nightmare,” Stiles says, interrupting. “Peter. He’s – you can’t –”

“You’re the one who brought me here,” Derek says. “Don’t try to – I’m here because of _you_ , it’s –” He pauses, trembling. “It’s _your fault_.”

“Shit, Stiles,” Scott says, “we gotta – oh, _fuck_.”

“What,” Miss Martin says, voice like ice, “are you two miscreants doing here?”

“Um,” Scott says, but when Stiles turns around she isn’t looking at Scott, just glaring straight at him.

“Hey,” he says weakly, and Scott makes a face.

“Incredible,” she says, eyes narrowing. “ _Incredible_.”

“I have a very good reason to be here,” Stiles says, as he watches Derek move away out of the corner of his eye. “A – lots of very persuasive, explicable reasons.”

“Is that so,” Miss Martin says, flat. Stiles is pretty sure she could kill him with just her shoe, but Derek has left, gone through a door – to the outside, Stiles thinks – so he doesn’t really have time to worry about her just yet.

“Scott will tell you all about it,” he blurts out, and turns around and sprints to the door.

 

*

 

It’s dark in the gardens, and quiet, but that’s not as comforting as it should be – it’s nice to get away from all the people inside, the people talking at him and touching him and generally treating him like some kind of overgrown doll, but the darkness is not comforting anymore, nor is the quiet.

He keeps expecting to – see her, even though he knows it’s not – she’s only showed up in his dreams yet, no matter what she keeps threatening – so he shouldn’t – he’s probably okay, she probably won’t come out – here. He’s almost certainly alone.

The servants have gotten used to the fact that he wakes them up in the middle of the night. Peter has offered to get a doctor to see him, to prescribe him some kind of sedative, but Derek doesn’t like the idea of that. It makes him feel weird, uncomfortable. Peter is – solicitous. That should make Derek feel good but it doesn’t, it doesn’t at all, because when Peter smiles there is nothing happening behind his eyes at all.

(Traitorously, Derek finds himself thinking that he’d prefer Stiles’ lies to Peter’s truths, if they’re truths at all. Stiles lied to him every time he opened his mouth, but he always, always looked like he meant it.)

He’s been living in a dream, the past week, and not the good kind – he has rarely had any kind of good dreams, so he’s not sure what he’s even comparing it to. Everything is in a fog, all the servants and the furniture and his ridiculous clothes and uncomfortable shoes and formal outfit with a fucking ornamental sword hanging off of his hip: the only thing that is sharp, is clear, is the sound of the song playing on the music box, and Kate in his dreams.

Her name is Kate. He doesn’t remember everything from the dreams but he remembers that, now.

“Hey!” Stiles is shouting from behind him, and Derek feels himself shudder, shoulders shaking. “Would you just – wait, for a second – Jesus –”

“I told you to leave me _alone_ ,” he cries out, before he can think about it, voice high, wobbling. “I told you to – to _go_ –”

“This one’s not very obedient, is he,” she says from behind him, and his blood runs cold. “Not like you, sweetheart.”

“What the fuck,” Stiles says, and Derek turns around very, very slowly.

She looks – almost alive, he thinks, but not quite, not quite. Her skin doesn’t quite knit together right; her limbs don’t move exactly correctly. Her teeth are chipped and dirty and her eyeballs are bloody red around the irises, and he _knows_ her.

“Hey, babe,” she says, and smirks. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“What the _fuck_ ,” Stiles says, from a little closer. “What the _fuck_ is that.”

“I’m not a that, I’m a _who_ ,” she purrs. “Don’t be rude.”

“You look like a fucking _corpse_ , is what you look like,” Stiles says, and she smiles, feral.

“That’s exactly what I am,” she says. “Aren’t you smart.”

Derek’s standing in-between the two of them, and some part of him wants to just – back away, lie down, close his eyes and press his hands over his ears while they go after each other, rip each other apart until there’s nothing left, until he’s alone. But he doesn’t move: he feels paralyzed.

“I used to know Dmitri, here,” she says, “back when he was just a little boy. We used to have a good time together, didn’t we? _Didn’t_ we?” she adds, voice sharp, when Derek doesn’t say anything.

“Shut the fuck up,” Stiles says. “Shut the fuck up right now.”

“You gonna make me?” she asks, grinning slyly at him over Derek’s shoulder. “You gonna rough me up?”

“How the fuck are you even alive?” Stiles spits.

“I’m not, quite,” she says, rolling her neck around, cracking it noisily. Derek flinches. “I’m almost alive. I’m very, very close.”

“Well, that’s super fucking reassuring, thanks,” Stiles says.

“Stop trying to argue with her,” Derek says dully. “It doesn’t work.”

“She’s going to do something to you, isn’t she,” Stiles says, and when Derek turns to look at him, finally, his face is pale and drawn. “She’s going to – to –”

“I guess,” Derek says. He’s not entirely sure what Kate’s going to do to him, but he hardly cares anymore. He just – he really doesn’t want to be here. He wants to be somewhere else.

Stiles lets out a strangled noise. “You can’t just – _Derek_. You can’t just – let her do that, you can’t –”

“You don’t get to tell me what I can and can’t do,” Derek tells him. “You don’t get to – you don’t get to give a shit about what happens to me.”

“But I _do_ ,” Stiles says, entire face crumpling. “I – Derek – I –” He pauses for a second, choking on his words. “Derek, I’m _sorry_ , I’m sorry, do you – I’m so sorry, I’m a fucking – I’m a piece of shit, okay, you don’t have to ever – to ever look at me again, I’ll – I’ll leave you alone, okay, I – I will this time, I promise, but just – don’t let her – do – whatever – to you just because I’m a fucking terrible person, okay, that’s not – I’m not that fucking important, okay, it’s not – it’s not _worth it_ , it’s not –”

“I think that’s quite enough of that,” Kate says, and strides confidently around him to grab Stiles by the throat.

Derek doesn’t so anything for a second but stare as Stiles scrabbles at her impossibly powerful hand, face turning red, eyes bugging out. It doesn’t seem real, what’s happening – none of it seems real.

“Let go of him,” he says when he comes back to himself, “let – let _go_ –”

“Hmm,” Kate says, as Stiles’ eyes roll back in his head and his body goes limp. She lets go of his throat and he crumples, and Derek’s heart almost stops beating in his chest.

“He’s alive,” she says clinically, gazing down at him for a moment before turning back to Derek. “This leaves us with an interesting little dilemma, don’t you think?”

“What do you mean?” Derek says. The muscles in his stomach are clenched so tightly he thinks he might be sick.

“Well,” she says, looking him over, “I need some – vital energy, if you will – to be – really, truly – _alive_ again. I was going to take yours, you know, it was going to be very cut and dried.” She pauses. “Your uncle was ever so pleased when you turned up, it was all he’d been waiting for all this time.”

“What?” Derek says, feeling slow, sluggish.  
  
“That man did _not_ like his family,” she says, sounding impressed. “Not at _all_. He felt very secondary to your parents, you know, and of course to you and the other children. A very unhappy man, your uncle. We always did – get along rather well, he and I.”

“I don’t remember that,” he says, although he doesn’t really remember anything – or not enough, anyway, not the things he should.

(He remembers Stiles, now, the scrawny little strange-looking boy in the kitchen, who took his hand and led him out of the burning building. He remembers that very clearly.)

“Well we couldn’t exactly be _obvious_ about it,” she scoffs. “It was his idea in the first place, you know. Our little… tryst. You weren’t very enthusiastic at first, of course. But you learned. You were very, very obedient.”

He wants to say something, wants to do something to make her – to make her _stop talking_ , but he can’t think of anything. He can’t think of anything at all.

“So I was going to kill you, and suck your life out of you to feed mine,” she continues conversationally, “but I’ve never really liked your uncle very much, you know. Or, well, I guess that’s not fair. Better to say that the shine just wore off a bit. But _you_ , though. You are _very_ interesting indeed. You look very different from the way you did when you were fifteen and baby-faced, you know.”

“What are you saying,” he manages, and she smiles.

“I was going to kill you, and then Peter was going to owe me,” she says, “and I was going to owe him. We were going to work together. And then I was going to have _power_. That’s all I ever wanted, you know. I wanted to be powerful.

“But maybe I won’t do that,” she says. “Maybe I’ll kill your little friend instead, and leave you alive, and you can be the one to help me. How does that sound to you?”

Derek looks down at Stiles, at his crumpled body on the flagstones of the courtyard. His arm is folded under him at an odd angle and there are bruises beginning to bloom on the skin of his neck. His eyelids are so pale they’re almost translucent, and his mouth his sagging open.

“I don’t want you to kill him,” he says without looking up, and she _tsk_ s.

“Aren’t you softhearted,” she says. “You always were, you know. I remember your father used to have to threaten you, to get you to go hunting with him. You used to _cry_.”

“I don’t remember my father,” he says.

“Pity,” she says drily as she starts to move closer to him. “I guess you won’t get a chance.”

“I don’t want you to kill me either,” he says, and she stops in her tracks.

“Sweetie,” she says. “That wasn’t our bargain.”

He swallows, still looking down at Stiles. If he just doesn’t – look at her – it will be easier, he thinks. It will be easier.

“I know it wasn’t,” he says. “I don’t care. I’m not bargaining with you.”

“I think you underestimate the amount of danger you’re in, Dmitri,” she says, practically growling.

“That’s not my name,” he says.

“Oh, yes, it is,” she tells him.

“No, it isn’t,” he says, and takes a deep breath, and wraps his fingers around the grip of his dinky little ornamental sword, and hopes.

  


**_EPILOGUE: IN WHICH OUR HERO FORMULATES A PLAN FOR HIS FUTURE._ **

Stiles comes to slowly, muzzily, everything slowly coming to focus in front of him.

He has a _doozy_ of a headache.

“Derek?” he croaks, and Derek’s face swims into view, looking kind of – bemused, Stiles will say. Generously.

“Oh good,” he says vaguely. “You’re not dead.”

“No,” Derek says. “I’m not dead.”

“Thank fucking god,” Stiles says, blinking a couple of times, trying to see more clearly. “Where is – is she –?”

“She’s, um, gone. I think,” Derek says. “I sort of – I don’t know, I did something and she just – disappeared. Um. There’s no body, or anything.”

“Probably just as well,” Stiles says. “Hard to explain a reanimated corpse even in the best of circumstances.”

Derek just stares at him, and Stiles feels his face heat up.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “I, um. I really will leave you alone. I shouldn’t have – I’m sorry for coming and – bothering you.”

“It’s okay,” Derek says, with no inflection in his voice whatsoever, which really isn’t helpful.

“I don’t really – like people, very much,” Stiles finds himself saying, even though he thinks he should probably just shut the fuck up. “I wasn’t expecting to – like you. I guess.”

Derek looks at him. “So you wouldn’t feel guilty if you hadn’t – liked me,” he says. “About – any of it.”

Stiles swallows. “I would have felt guilty if you’d died either way, probably,” he says. “Otherwise, um. No. Probably I wouldn’t have.”

Derek looks down at his hands, shakes his head a little. “That is – fucked up,” he says.

“I know,” Stiles says. “I’m pretty fucked up. You probably noticed.”

“A little,” Derek admits.

“I have the – the money, still,” Stiles says. “From – your uncle. I didn’t want to take it but he – he didn’t really give us an option. I could – you could have it, if you want. To just – go somewhere. Wherever you want. Do – whatever you want. It’s – it’s a lot of money. I mean I guess you could – stay here, you can do – whatever, I just. I wouldn’t want to. I don’t think.”

“He was trying to kill me,” Derek mutters.

“What?” Stiles says.

“Peter was trying to kill me,” Derek says. “I think he’ll probably keep trying.”

“Well definitely get the fuck out, then,” Stiles says. “I hear America is nice. Well, parts of America. Specific locales.”

The corner of Derek’s lips twitch up. “I don’t know anything about America,” he says.

“They’ll probably like you,” Stiles says. “They like good-looking people. So I’ve heard.”

Derek turns bright red.

“You could,” he starts, and stops. He’s staring intently at his hands, still.

“I could what?” Stiles asks, heart beating so fast that he can feel it in his ears. He pushes himself up to his elbows. “I could what?”

“You could come,” Derek says, in a very small voice. “You and Scott. If you – if you wanted.”

“Yes,” Stiles says, “yes, okay, if that woman hasn’t killed him, yes, we can – we can –”

“You’re a – a fucking asshole, you know,” Derek says, voice shaking a little. “You are a real piece of shit. I don’t – I sort of hate you, you know.”

“I know,” Stiles says. “I know.”

“I don’t – like many people, either,” Derek mumbles. “I didn’t really have a chance.”

“I know,” Stiles says, pushing himself all the way upright. “There are – a lot of better people out there, you know. Than me.”

“I like you,” Derek whispers, like he’s ashamed of it. Stiles probably would be.

“I’m going to touch you now,” Stiles says. “If that’s all right.” Derek nods a little, jerky, and Stiles wets his lips, reaches out his shaking hands to touch one cheek and then the other, to turn Derek’s head toward his. His eyes are clenched shut.

“I’m going to kiss you,” he tells him, voice shaking as he rubs his thumbs along Derek’s cheek bones, and Derek nods once, just a little twitch of his head, before he slowly opens his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://morgan-leigh.tumblr.com/)! Sometimes I post snippets of things. Mostly I scream about Tyler Hoechlin.


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